Has anyone read these? I just received my first Liavek book today (bought it on eBay). My problem is that it's "[[Liavek, Players of Luck]]" which is the second one in this series. Should I wait until I can find a copy of the first book, or can I just dive right in? I remember reading that the character in the Lindholm stories is always the same one, so maybe I should start from the beginning? *bites nails*

“Men it is who think they can rule others' lives but have no bonds to them. Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide?”

I've had the whole collection (well, the first 4 aka the ones with Lindholm stories in them) for awhile now and just yesterday decided it's time to give them a go. I've read the first three stories from [[Liavek]] now and I'm quite enjoying the experience. I thought the first and the third story felt relatively "familiar" in writing style (that is, they reminded me of Megan's way to express certain things) and I'm now wondering how much this experience of sharing a world influenced the writers (based on the text "Liavek: A Creation Myth" that is in the book it seems many of them were just starting to get published at the time).

“Men it is who think they can rule others' lives but have no bonds to them. Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide?”

I finally read all the four volumes I have last year, and I can honestly recommend them. There's a few odd stories that differed a bit too much stylistically/were so far removed from the other stories they could have been set in an entirely different world, but those are a clear minority. The further you read, the more you encounter tiny connections, which I thought was a lot of fun! There are also two or three major story lines that come together towards the end (the Lindholm/Brust collaboration being one of them). The cast of characters is also (maybe surprisingly for the original publication date?) quite diverse.

The original series has now also been published as a (reorganised and edited) series of ebooks. The wiki page is a good starting point for info on the publication, and there's quite a bit of interesting stuff about the way this sort of collaboration worked on Shetterly's Liavek blog.

“Men it is who think they can rule others' lives but have no bonds to them. Do you think that to bond or not to bond is for you alone to decide?”